What’s Trending on Facebook? Exactly What You’d Expect

Yesterday, the friendgineers at Facebook announced the birth of something called “Trending.” The feature differs from Twitter’s “Trending” section in that it is . . . on Facebook.

“To the right of your News Feed, you’ll see a list of topics that have recently spiked in popularity,” writes a gentleman on the Facebook blog—which, we are saddened to report, is not called “Faceblog.” The list of trending stories “is personalized, including topics based on things you’re interested in and what is trending across Facebook overall. Each topic is accompanied by a headline that briefly explains why it is trending.” So, for example, a typical trending bar on Facebook might look something like the following:

A college friend’s Kickstarter: the most pretentious poet from your sophomore creative-writing class has decided to self-publish. How can you help? Glad you asked. Here’s where you and your money come in.

Some Buzzfeed listicle: the one about how you can tell whether you grew up in some place. The best indicator of “how to tell” whether you grew up in, say, Los Angeles: a memory of growing up in Los Angeles.

Some other Buzzfeed listicle: it’s a list of reasons about why it’s great to be a certain age. The number of reasons on the list matches the age in question, so you know that only the funniest and best observations are included.

A writer sharing his or her own article: always in the format of, “Here’s something I wrote about . . .”

A picture of a sunset: that heavily filtered iPhone shot is as good as (or better than!) being in Hawaii with your cousin and her husband.

__A high-school friend got engaged:__at this point, everyone in your high school has gotten engaged, like, six or seven times.